Well if you know me, you know I am not big on 'days' - especially I don't like things like Women's Day and Valentine Day etc.
But there are certain days which have a lot of importance because, if for nothing else, they at least make us think about something specific for a while. Independence Day is a day like that (for me).
August 15th is important for me because it reminds me of the Partition. It makes me think of my family that was born and brought up in what is not Pakistan. It makes me think of obviously my luck at not having to flee my house, not having to live in refugee camps, not having to start a new life. But that was thing that some of my family members and their friends went thought. From riches to rags. From having houses as big as palaces, to living in tents. It was a tough time for a lot of people from my community.
While the whole freedom struggle is important to remember. While it is necessary to pay tribute to those who died for this county etc I think when something happens to you personally it has more of an impact. All our freedom fights are just names we (people of my generation) read about in our history books. We will never understand them, their life, their motives, their ideals. It's not wrong cause we obviously didn't live during those times. We might take our freedom for granted but we do that with everything. So for me Independence Day isn't about getting freedom or patriotism or any of that. Independence Day is about the Partition. It has always been (since I thought about the whole thing) and it always will be.
To Be Continued.
2 comments:
Great way of putting it in words there.
Very true, that we don't understand the freedom that was the result of the sacrifice by our ancestors.
Thanks.
I dislike when people come up to me and says I don't have a sense of this or I don't have a sense of that. I mean if it isn't a personal experience, I will have little feel of it. Yes I can feel proud/sad/confused etc that someone died for this country but I can't relate to it because I never lived under British rule. I will never know how good or bad life was back then so I will never really understand the freedom struggle. And I think people expecting this generation to truly understand is unrealistic and unreasonable.
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